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Cat burningwas a form ofcruelty to animalsas an entertainment or festivity inWesternandCentral Europeprior to the 1800s. People would gathercatsand hoist them onto abonfirecausing death by burning or otherwise through the effects of exposure to extreme heat. In themedievaltoearly modernperiods, cats, which were associated withvanityandwitchcraft,were sometimes burned as symbols of thedevil.[1]
Descriptions
editIn 1758, the Benedictine Dom Jean François wrote a dissertation on cat burning inMetz,France.[2]According to historianNorman Davies,the burning of cats was an attraction at theMidsummer's Fair in16th century Paris.He describes a celebration where a stage was built so the celebrants could lower a net containing dozens of cats into a bonfire.[3]This phenomenon was also described inThe Great Cat Massacre,a collection of essays by American historianRobert Darnton:[4]
Cats also figured in the cycle of Saint John the Baptist, which took place on June 24, at the time of summer solstice. Crowds made bonfires, jumped over them, danced around them, and threw into them objects with magical power, hoping to avoid disaster and obtain good fortune during the rest of the year. A favorite object was cats—cats tied up in bags, cats suspended from ropes, or cats burned at stake. Parisians liked to incinerate cats by the sackful, while the Courimauds ( "cour à miaud" or cat chasers) of Saint Chamond preferred to chase a flaming cat through the streets. In parts of Burgundy and Lorraine they danced around a kind of burning May pole with a cat tied to it. In the Metz region they burned a dozen cats at a time in a basket on top of a bonfire. The ceremony took place with great pomp in Metz itself, until it was abolished in 1765.
Other historians includingRoger ChartierandHarold Mahhave criticized Darnton's interpretation, citing issues with his methodology and questionable interpretations of primary sources.[5][6]
See also
editReferences
edit- ^Rebold Benton, Janetta (1 April 1997).Holy Terrors: Gargoyles on Medieval Buildings.Abbeville Press. pp.82.ISBN9780789201829.
- ^François, Jean (1758).Dissertation sur l'ancien usage des feux de la Saint-Jean, et d'y brûler les chats à Metz[Dissertation on the ancient use of the bonfires of St. John's Day, and of burning cats in Metz] (in French). Cahiers Élie Fleur. pp. 49–72.
- ^Davies, Norman (1996).Europe: A History.Oxford University Press. p. 543.ISBN0198201710.
- ^Darnton, Robert (2009).The Great Cat Massacre: And Other Episodes in French Cultural History.Basic Books. pp. 83–84.ISBN9780465012749– via Google Books.
- ^Mah, Harold (Spring 1991). "Suppressing the Text: The Metaphysics of Ethnographic History in Darnton's Great Cat Massacre".History Workshop.31(31): 1–20.doi:10.1093/hwj/31.1.1.JSTOR4289048.
- ^LaCapra, Dominick(1998). "Chartier, Darnton, and the Great Symbol Massacre".The Journal of Modern History.60(1): 95–112.doi:10.1086/243336.JSTOR1880407.S2CID145601773.